Runaway Rogue

Chapter Five: Indigo's POV

Indigo felt like she would never be able to shake the chill from her bones. A good amount of sleep, a hot shower, and liters of tea hadn't been enough so far. Now, she wasn't sure if it was the aftermath of jumping in an icy river or if it was the shock of it all.

She had gone into heat, while taking an intense silver-laced medication. And through her heat, she had drawn a werewolf to her location. He had been close, closer than she ever wanted a single werewolf to be. Had her mind been any weaker, the heat been any stronger, there was not guarantee she would have been able to make it out.

Indigo glanced around her feeble room. It was nothing special. At least, not to anyone else. There was nothing notable about the vanity that had been dented and damaged or the small bed with mismatched linens. Her dresser was in a state of disrepair, most of the clothes in it had seen better days as well.

It was an ugly mess, less than what her younger self would have hoped to achieve by this stage in life. Her younger self had not appreciated how easy life had been, though. Back then, she didn't understand how hard it could be to put food on the table, what it meant to decide between eating tonight and putting gas in the tank to get to work the next day. Then again, she had been raised to believe that her parents would always be there for her, that she would have a handsome, kind mate handed to her and they would face life together.

That dream was prettier than this mess was, but at least she could say that she had carved this life herself. And it had started to feel like home.

Perhaps that was her greatest sin, thinking that things couldn't get any worse, when clearly, they always could.

"How are you holding up?" Paris asked, entering the bedroom with a chipped mug full of hot tea.

Paris was gorgeous in the traditional way with her brown doe eyes and shampoo commercial hair. Her beauty had been her downfall. When she had come of age and the alpha of her pack had realized that she was not his mate, he cast her out to be a rogue. Apparently, if he could not have the exceptional beauty as his own, no one could. The poor girl had nothing.

Sasha and Indigo had found her wandering around, lost and filthy. They tried to encourage her to hold onto her wolf and find a new pack to accept her, both of them understanding the consequences of letting half of themselves go. Paris would have none of it, determined that if the werewolf community could allow this to happen, she wanted no part of it.

The girl was as sweet as she was stubborn.

"I don't think I'll ever be warm again," Indigo sighed, taking the mug and sitting on the squeaky bed.

"We were so worried about you. I can't believe that you had to jump into a river," Paris said, even her voice soft and beautiful.

"I can't believe that you went into heat through the medication," Sasha said from her spot in the doorway. She folded her arms over her chest. "I didn't even know that was possible."

This was the conversation they had been avoiding. If Indigo was even slightly less loyal to these girls, she would have packed a bag in the dead of night and left without saying goodbye. There would have been less tears that way, less heartache, at least for her.

"Obviously, my wolf is more desperate to be reunited with her mate than we thought," Indigo sighed. She tried not to think about how close that wolf had gotten to her, but it was where her mind always returned. What would have happened if she had stumbled or if she couldn't overpower the heat? Where would she be now?

"You never went into heat when you were with Andrew?" Paris asked. With her back turned to Sasha, she didn't notice how pale and disgusted the other woman suddenly became.